Race-related facial qualities 1 Race-related Facial Qualities Contribute to Stereotyping by White, Black, and Korean Judges

Four studies assessed recent bottom-up theories of stereotyping by examining the contribution of race-related appearance qualities to impressions of Black, White, and Korean faces by Black, White, and Korean participants. Results supported the feature-trait association (FTA) hypothesis (Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002) and the familiar face overgeneralization (FFO) hypothesis (Zebrowitz, Bronstad, & Lee, 2007), but not the colorism hypothesis (Maddox & Gray, 2002). Impressions of own and other-race faces were shaped by racial prototypicality, with more prototypical group members more likely to be stereotyped. For White perceivers, these impressions tended to mirror cultural stereotypes of the particular racial group, supporting the FTA hypothesis. For non-White perceivers, impressions tended to be mediated by familiarity, with more positive impressions of more familiar-looking targets and more negative impressions of less familiar-looking targets, supporting the FFO hypothesis.